Gina McColl

THE Victorian Opera has hit back at claims published in The Age that the company has failed to increase audiences for the art form since it began operating in 2006, despite Victorian taxpayers quadrupling their funding of opera, and has limited prospects for achieving significance beyond the state.

VO's general manager, Lucy Shorrocks, says the analysis by consultant Brian Benjamin (''Short-changing the arts?'' published on August 27) judged the company's performance and value for money only on the basis of its main-stage opera productions, and did not take into account its regional and education programs, cross-art form collaborations, and commitment to new Australian works - all central to its charter and constitution, and its reach.

VO data shows between 14 and 45 per cent of its audience, depending on repertoire, has never attended opera before, she says.

''So in terms of what's offered to the Victorian public in return for their tax dollars, there's a huge range of activity.'' The only opera company in the country to regularly deliver new Australian works, commissions have ranged from the well-received Rembrandt's Wife, to the more idiosyncratic How to Kill Your Husband (And Other Handy Household Hints).

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''I acknowledge that they don't reach huge audiences the first year,'' Ms Shorrocks says. Nor have any been restaged since their premieres, but the VO is negotiating the staging overseas of several of its productions, including new Australian works. ''We've got interest from international promoters including festivals in the US, UK and China, and a US opera company,'' she says.

She points to the lessons of UK National Theatre's War Horse, coming to Melbourne in December, and the Royal Shakespeare Company's Matilda the Musical, which opens soon on Broadway. ''These works are a fantastic commercial success, but they started in a subsidised environment.''